| JEFF WOODHOUSE | |
Jeff caught his first fish at the age of five, a mackerel from a Torquay fishing boat. That was the starting point 53 years ago and the sight of that living silvery image coming up from the invisible depths had him hooked for life. Since then he has practised virtually every type of fishing, although not always successfully. He doesn’t just like fish, he has a love affair with them, in his living room, in his garden and at times, in his freezer. Lately he has spent more time either running clubs or assisting them to become successful. Now he admits to being too old to chase monsters, he’s happier getting as much fun as possible out of what’s before him. In this monthly series Jeff indulges the rebel within himself, often controversial and always trying to think differently about the usual trends in fishing. |
| MY BLANKING YEAR CONTINUES, AND THEN… Not much change in luck from last month, the blanks continue for much of the time. I had organised a teams of four event for the Thames Valley Association on our new Jubilee River stretch as another attempt to find out what is in the river. The result was, not a lot! The winner came off the first peg by the sluice with 3lbs 10ozs and true enough, I have witnessed worse matches on the main Thames, but seeing as more than half the field blanked I didn’t feel all that out of place on this occasion.
I decided to try a two rod approach at the hotel stretch on the odd evening in what we call the ‘quiet swim’. Roger Wyndham-Barnes moors his 14 foot boat here so you have to fish over the top of it, but that only poses a very slight problem. Fishing two rods does involve the use of alarms and all that ‘carbelling’ stuff that Lee Swords keeps spouting on about, but here you see a very desperate man and anything that might double my chances has to be tried. So it was that one evening having thrown in lots of broken halibut pellets I put out one rod on a Halibut Pellet boily that had been dunked in some of Graham Elliott’s shellfish oil and one with a 13mm halibut pellet, plain and simple. Frank Guttfield was fishing further upstream and about 10:30 he came down to tell me he’d lost a fish after a cracking bite and run, cracking being the operative word as his hook length had been broken. Frank doesn’t like losing fish when they break the hook link, but we guessed this must have been a river carp from the way it behaved and he’d already packed up and after our chat he was gone.
A quarter of an hour later my inside rod (the simple 13mm halibut pellet) alarm screamed and I struck. I felt the weight immediately and the bumping, but after 10 seconds I knew it not to be a barbel. So what was it? A chub or more likely a big bream down there. To land it I would have had to do some knitting with the other rod and decided to bring it in out of the way. It shows what little fight the fish put up since the rod holding it was just resting in my left elbow joint whilst I wound in the spare rod. Eventually I got the fish into the net and it was a chub and a rather large chub at that, but didn’t look like anything exceptional except that it could be my best yet Thames chub. Worth a weigh? Probably not, so without removing the fish from the landing net or the water I slid my hands around its shoulders to see where the hook was in its mouth. That is when it’s size truly struck me for I couldn’t get my hands completely around the fish and I have big hands (size 10 if you know what that means). Putting my finger tips together around the other side still left a gap of an inch or more between my thumbs around the front. So this was a big fish after all! My previous best Thames chub was 5lbs 7ozs and my best ever chub was just over 5lbs 14ozs, a Cherwell fish. Now this was worth weighing and true enough, after putting the weigh sling around it the scales went completely round and registered 1lbs and almost 10 ozs. Try again for a second lift – 1lbs 9ozs, which give a total of over 61/2 lbs – whoopee, a best Thames chub (remember I still have the sling to deduct). Just a minute, try another weighing. Around the scales (Weighmasters) gives 6lbs (not the 5lbs that I first calculated) plus 1lbs 81/2 ozs (losing a drop or two more water perhaps) that’s – 7lbs 81/2 ozs, but with the weigh sling. Shaking now, check the math, and what does the sling weigh? Never mind, see to the fish and with no camera (I told you they are a curse) I consider getting a disposable camera from the car 60 yards away. Dismiss the thought because there’s no close-up feature on it and it might take too long, not good for the fish so let it go and off it went after a short spell holding it in the water.
So who’s going to believe me? Doesn’t matter because I know it to be fact and if the fish is ever caught again, possibly heavier in winter, I will recognise it with a small sore on it’s right side towards the tail. No need to lie, but now to weigh the sling and at a shade under 12 ozs makes the fish at least 6lbs 12ozs net weight. My new personal best and in telling people about it after I quickly got reminded about using my mobile phone to take a picture. DOH! Am I A Superstar Now? Later when I told Frank he confessed that of five chub he’s caught over 6lbs nothing has bettered that or come close to it. Even my hero, Graham Marsden, now tells me he’s never caught a chub as big as that. So does this fish put me in the super league of fishing stars or what? A brief answer is – NO! I consider myself lucky now to have met with this fish, which just happened to be passing a tasty halibut pellet that it fancied eating on that particular night. There was little skill, no more than usual when I have blanked so many times, and I can’t say I deliberately set out to catch a monster chub. Add to this my track record of catching monster fish is almost non-existent and the result is I simply just got lucky. But here lies another question – if you happen to catch a monster fish on a bait that was not necessarily intended to catch that fish, can you still count that fish and take the credit for it? It would seem that some anglers think you can’t claim it, but where do you draw the line? I was fishing for any large-ish fish, but more particularly barbel. I know that bream have been caught in the area and they will take a 13mm halibut pellet as will chub and Graham Elliott caught a very nice 5+lbs chub in January last from this very swim. So in this case I think I can rightfully claim it, but there are other questionable cases where some anglers think you can’t. The 13lb eel for instance caught whilst the guy was carp fishing. Some believe he shouldn’t consider this fish to be a PB simply because eels weren’t his target species on that occasion (or any other by all accounts). What utter rubbish! We are first and foremost anglers of all species and no matter what bait or method we employ on the other end of the line there is always a chance that some other fish will pick it up. Whether that is a 20+lb bream caught on a fly, a story I believe is true and involved Peter Stone, but not as the captor, or whether it is an eel caught on a boily. It doesn’t matter a fig, it is still a fish that has been caught on rod and line by an angler. A chap I met many years ago on the shore at Llanfairfechan told me why he loved sea fishing so much, “Because you just never know what species you will catch next.” So why should it be any different for a coarse angler? Here’s a further twist, supposing the ‘best’ fish you caught was foul-hooked, say just outside its mouth. Can you count that? My answer would be again, ‘Why not?’ After all, the fish would probably have had your bait anyway and it may have been a slight delay in your strike meant that the hook was being ejected, but still managed to hook the fish perhaps whilst the hair-rigged bait was still in its mouth. What then if the hook was in it’s pectoral fin or it’s tail? Where do you draw the line? In matches, no matter where it was hooked I would wager that fish would go straight in the net to be weighed with the others. And why not? But what happens if it is your personal best fish, do you count a foul hooked fish then? How can you do otherwise? You can’t erase its capture, you can’t wind back time, nor can you lie when someone asks you “What’s the biggest you’ve had out of here?” They didn’t qualify the question with “properly hooked or foul-hooked”, which you can add to your answer of course, but a foul-hooked fish may still be the biggest fish you’ve ever caught from a water. It is there, the catch occurred, fair or foul, but does it count? Basket Bum A further reason for the lack of fishing this past month was my impending operation for a complaint that used to be know as ‘basket bum’. The surgery is just a few minutes for which I had to have a general anaesthetic, but it’s the recovery time that eats away at the fishing opportunities. You can’t sit down you see, and before anyone says “I don’t have any of the old Chalfonts.” let me tell you what my doctor said. “There are two sorts of people in this world. Those that admit to having piles and liars.”
Whilst in this state of recuperation I did some thinking about the attacks on angling by our P*TA friends (never spell it completely otherwise it may come up in Google searches from their supporters) and others. Remember that last national census when people were asked to put down Klingon or something for their religion in the hope that if 10,000 registered it then Klingon would have to become a recognised religion? Well, we have some 5+ years to go before the next census, but start to get this into your heads now and promote it hard. Next time when it asks “What religion …(do you practise)?”, you answer…. ‘ANGLING’. You wouldn’t be telling a lie, after all as an angler you worship the fish and adore the outdoor environment, your church, so to speak. You have rituals associated with your religion, like buying bait the day before, going on the holy day (although every day you fancy could be a holy day), tackling up, and setting the rod pod out, if that’s your bag. When you examine it very closely, angling is very much a religion. But for the best reason of all – with new laws coming into force that will stop others attacking, mocking or preventing the practice of religious beliefs and also will exclude the promotion of religious hatred, it would mean we would be protected – UNDER THE LAW! It’s a thought. |
